Ben Shapiro's Hypocrisy Was Astonishing Tonight At Rudder

8,616 Views | 148 Replies | Last: 1 yr ago by Aggrad08
Sapper Redux
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nortex97 said:

Sapper Redux said:

Rocag said:

First step of understanding the non-Christian perspective on Jesus is to realize that there is absolutely no assumption that any of the information contained within the gospels is actually accurate. I'm pretty confident most modern Jews don't believe that the New Testament offers a reliable account of events.


There seems to be this belief amongst some Christians that Judaism is just angry about Jesus and Christianity without Christ rather than a separate religion with its own beliefs and traditions.
There is a real argument imho that Christianity is so schismatic precisely because it is a descendent/schismatic division from Judaism.

Maybe, maybe not, but there are a lot of poorly read/doctrinally sound Christian's and jews alike imho so I am pretty sure that's got more to do with it. What cannot be logically argued is that Christianity did not begin/come from Judaism.


I wouldn't argue that at all. I'm simply saying that Judaism is not as close to Christianity in beliefs and practices as many Christians seem to assume.
AGC
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AG
Sapper Redux said:

nortex97 said:

Sapper Redux said:

Rocag said:

First step of understanding the non-Christian perspective on Jesus is to realize that there is absolutely no assumption that any of the information contained within the gospels is actually accurate. I'm pretty confident most modern Jews don't believe that the New Testament offers a reliable account of events.


There seems to be this belief amongst some Christians that Judaism is just angry about Jesus and Christianity without Christ rather than a separate religion with its own beliefs and traditions.
There is a real argument imho that Christianity is so schismatic precisely because it is a descendent/schismatic division from Judaism.

Maybe, maybe not, but there are a lot of poorly read/doctrinally sound Christian's and jews alike imho so I am pretty sure that's got more to do with it. What cannot be logically argued is that Christianity did not begin/come from Judaism.


I wouldn't argue that at all. I'm simply saying that Judaism is not as close to Christianity in beliefs and practices as many Christians seem to assume.


The response would be that starting in the 400-500s Judaism actively began distancing itself from Christianity and Jewish ideas such as the messiah and persons of God that would lead to trinitarian theology. The resultant contemporary Judaism of course looks nothing like it in orthodox form and the reformed sect has little to do at all with God (I say this as someone with a converted family member, having participated in their version of Seder, and who's friend with educators that take kids to sacred spaces every year which includes q&a with rabbis, imams, priests, and pastors).

Christians are mistaken yes, that modern day Judaism is close to what the disciples were. They don't recognize the shift because most Protestants don't embrace church history beyond schism.

Edit: to summarize, judaism is different by choice, active cultivation of certain beliefs to the exclusion of others, not because it always was.
Zobel
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AG
Any central tenets used to define Judaism in the second temple would include Christianity by necessity.

You already lost this discussion last time. Any circle you can draw around all of the various Judaisms of the second temple era to lump them into a single religion - which is itself an anachronistic and foreign concept - requires artificial homogenization and trivialization of the distinctive beliefs, premises, practices, and presuppositions of each.

The very idea of the category of Judaism is an external, Imperial one that came in later. Indeed the separation of "Christian" from "Jew" was a political matter, not a religious one.

The New Testament is a Jewish document, a statement of Judaism, and from it's writers perspective it is the exact same Judaism of the OT. All early Christians took for granted that they continued in the Torah and the tradition that delivered it to them, that they were preaching and teaching a valid reading of the Torah - and they would insist not only is it a valid continuation, but the only valid continuation of the faith and worship of Israel.

The above summarizes to some extent the introduction to Chilton and Neusner's Judaism in the New Testament. Here is a direct quote.

Quote:

We simply bring to its logical conclusion the widely understood fact that, in antiquity as today, many Judaisms competed. Most knowledgeable people now reject the conception of a single Judaism, everywhere paramount. A requirement of theology, the dogma of a single, valid Judaism contradicts the facts of history at every point in the history of Judaism, which finds its dynamic in the on-going struggle among Judaisms to gain the position of the sole, authentic representation of the Torah. Further, along with the notion of a single official Judaism, we give up the notion of a unitary, internally harmonious Judaism, a lowest common denominator among a variety of diverse statements and systems. And logic further insists that we let go of the notion of an incremental, cumulative, "traditional" Judaism. At the same time, and for the same reason, we dismiss as vacuous and hopelessly general the notion of a single Judaism characteristic of a given age, e.g. the first century BC and AD, and we reject as groundless the conception that all documents of said age tell us about one and the same religious community, therefore, a single "Israel" and its Torah. It follows that the sources of a given period of time do not tell us about a single Judaism, characteristic of that time. They tell us about their writers' premises, the Judaic thinking that underpins the Judaic system they have put forth and that alone.
Like last time, you are holding to vacuous and hopelessly general notion that becomes so vague as to include everything (including ALL Christianity) but explains nothing.

I have no interest in discussing with this with you further, because I know from experience it is a waste of time. So say whatever you like.
Sapper Redux
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Quote:

The response would be that starting in the 400-500s Judaism actively began distancing itself from Christianity and Jewish ideas such as the messiah and persons of God that would lead to trinitarian theology.


This is a very Christo-centric notion of Jewish history. It ignores the developments well before then in places like Babylon during the period immediately after the destruction of the second temple and the very internal nature of the theological debates from which Christianity was excluded very early on.
Sapper Redux
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Yes, you repeat the theses of those you prefer very well. Boyarin isn't a fan of orthodoxy and the defined notion of religion. Unfortunately, his perspective is quite focused on the nature of Christianity and the Jewish response to it that he ignores the ways in which Judaism as it develops after the temple just doesn't care about Christianity. The debates over "two powers" theology in rabbinic literature occurs well after Christianity is trinitarian, suggesting they just don't give a damn about what Christians are claiming. Suggesting the imposition of the nature of Judaism comes from the outside is also a bizarre reading of the evidence of the debates and discussions within Jewish spaces in Israel and in the first century diaspora.

Your own arguments ignore the wildly different sects of Christian belief and theology in the first couple of centuries and the clear development of ideas not found in traditional or even esoteric Jewish second temple beliefs. You want to draw a straight line for Christianity but not Judaism and it doesn't work.
AGC
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AG
Sapper Redux said:

Quote:

The response would be that starting in the 400-500s Judaism actively began distancing itself from Christianity and Jewish ideas such as the messiah and persons of God that would lead to trinitarian theology.


This is a very Christo-centric notion of Jewish history. It ignores the developments well before then in places like Babylon during the period immediately after the destruction of the second temple and the very internal nature of the theological debates from which Christianity was excluded very early on.


I'm not sure you're effectively making the point you think you are. Written record no, we don't really have one prior to that. We know as early as the gospels that they're trying to distance themselves from Christ and exclude him and we can see the fruits of the discussion in modern day reformed Judaism. there's a freaking orange on the Seder plate for feminism and lgbtq inclusion. The changes are astronomical and intentional, we can at least be honest about that.
Zobel
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AG
since you managed to avoid calling people antisemitic this time i guess we can try a conversation.


Quote:

The debates over "two powers" theology in rabbinic literature occurs well after Christianity is trinitarian
i don't think this is correct at all. there are three ways to look at the whole thing.

one, that there is a continuity of belief that was also consistently condemned as a heresy (static belief on "both sides"). this presumes a kind of nascent orthodoxy or at least competing proto-orthodoxies.

the second is that there was a developed belief which began as orthodox or tolerable, and as it developed became heretical or intolerable. here you have a change on only one "side" and you have a singular continuous orthodoxy on the other.

the third is that there is a post-facto condemnation - a continuity of belief that was later rejected by a developed orthodoxy in Rabbinic Judaism. in this case you also have a change on only one side, but the opposite way around - instead of the "two powers" side evolving to go from an orthodox to heretical position, you have the Rabbinic side moving what is acceptable away from the proto-orthodox two powers side.

The third seems by far the most likely to me, and the easiest witnesses to it are Philo, St Paul, and St John. None seem aware that identifying the Logos as part of the godhead is controversial or feel the need to defend it as orthodox. Even in St Justin's Dialogue with Trypho - which seems to genuinely attempt to represent and interact with normative Jewish beliefs - the Jews with Trypho and Typho himself accept without argument that there is a second power, or at the least Justin doesn't seem compelled to defend the idea as orthodox at all.

in order to condemn an idea as heretical you need two things: a clearly divergent set of ideas, and a body with sufficient authority to pronounce that condemnation. the reality is in the first century you had the former but not the latter. but even then, there isn't a hint at all in the first century that the identification of Logos as God - whether by Philo or anyone else - was in and of itself problematic.

At any rate Segal who is generally considered the leading scholar on this and wrote a book by the name of Two Powers said it wasn't deemed heretical until the 2nd century but traced the roots of the idea back to ~200 BC. So your initial statement is simply incorrect to begin with, especially considering that the Trinitarian view of Christianity is present from the start on the pages of the NT.


Quote:

Suggesting the imposition of the nature of Judaism comes from the outside is also a bizarre reading of the evidence of the debates and discussions within Jewish spaces in Israel and in the first century diaspora.
that isn't what I said. I said the category of Judaism as distinct from Christian is political. The idea of a faith or religion as a separate thing from a people is an external idea. Judaism is the religion of the Judaeans. If there are multiple distinct beliefs practiced in Judaea, there are many Judaisms, even if they are contradictory. This is the absolute clear assumption from both Roman (Cassius Dio, or Seutonius) and Jewish sources at the time (e.g. Josephus or Philo). The ficus Iudaicus was a huge driving factor in a distinction between Jews and Christian. Judaism was first defined as a religion rather than by birth by the Roman Emperor Nerva in 96 AD who removed the "calumnia" of the Jews by allowing non-practicing Jews to not pay the Jewish tax regardless of their ethnicity. The whole idea of religion as we think of it today is completely foreign to Judaism. In the end what divided Christianity from Judaism was the laws of the Roman Empire.
Quote:

Your own arguments ignore the wildly different sects of Christian belief and theology in the first couple of centuries and the clear development of ideas not found in traditional or even esoteric Jewish second temple beliefs. You want to draw a straight line for Christianity but not Judaism and it doesn't work.
i never said any of that. there were different sects that could be potentially included in a category called Christian. the problem is that those category lines are drawn post-facto by ignorant moderns to put people into neat buckets. These lines often have almost nothing to do with how people lived their lives or with what they believed and almost always impose anachronistic concepts to make these distinctions, like the very idea of religion or the completely laughable anachronism of monotheism.
Zobel
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AG
if anyone is interested in the Jewish Tax and how it shaped the ideas of religion vs peoplehood and imposed lines between Jews and Christians there's a really good book called "The Fiscus Judaicus and the Parting of the Ways" by Marius Heemstra. Another good one is "Border Lines" written by Daniel Boyarin.
Funky Winkerbean
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AG
craigernaught said:

Funky Winkerbean said:

craigernaught said:

Conservatives turning into anti-vaxxer, anti-gmo hippies is the funniest thing in years.

Dangerous and stupid. But funny.


They aren't "anti" anything, they just want the freedom of choice. Youre using confirmation bias to support your own incomplete opinion.

Found the hippie!
Found the clone.
It is so easy to be wrong—and to persist in being wrong—when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.
Thomas Sowell
94chem
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Sapper Redux said:

TrailerTrash said:

Ben Shapiro claimed Jesus was a rebel who got killed by the Roman Government.
What I find interesting is Mr. Shapiro made the claim without being able to offer historical evidence to support his claim, and when he gets called out on it, he uses his religion as an excuse. When anyone challenges it some conservatives suddenly pivot from their anti cancer culture rhetoric and begin shushing anyone who questions Shapiro.

All I am asking is be consistent.





I mean… he was a rebel who was killed by the Roman government. Pretty sure everyone agrees on that. The difference is in how you consider the man, not the method of death. The Romans killed him. The antisemitism in the gospels notwithstanding (zero evidence at all for the Barabbas incident or any kind of tradition), what we know of the historical Pilate is that he wouldn't have blinked twice at brutally torturing and killing anyone who claimed to be a Jewish messiah.
The story of Barabbas is included in all 4 gospels, at least 3 of which were written by Jews. Yet it's in there because of antisemitism? Is not an account written in quadruplicate decent evidence for a tradition?
94chem,
That, sir, was the greatest post in the history of TexAgs. I salute you. -- Dough
Sapper Redux
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There's zero evidence outside of the gospel accounts of any such tradition and no history at all of Rome releasing condemned rebels because the colonials wanted it. We can go into how the gospels were not constructed independent of one another (aside from Mark as the earliest), but the historicity for this kind of event is not there.
dermdoc
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Sapper Redux said:

There's zero evidence outside of the gospel accounts of any such tradition and no history at all of Rome releasing condemned rebels because the colonials wanted it. We can go into how the gospels were not constructed independent of one another (aside from Mark as the earliest), but the historicity for this kind of event is not there.


So why did they write them?
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Sapper Redux
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There's any number of symbolic readings that can be made for a passage like that. One I've seen involves a comparison with the scapegoat ritual of the High Holy Days. Others focus on a parable between the nature of the expected Jewish messiah as a military rebel vs the messiah as presented in Jesus.
dermdoc
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Sapper Redux said:

There's any number of symbolic readings that can be made for a passage like that. One I've seen involves a comparison with the scapegoat ritual of the High Holy Days. Others focus on a parable between the nature of the expected Jewish messiah as a military rebel vs the messiah as presented in Jesus.


Thanks. But what I really meant was if this is all made up, why were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John written?

Probably four different authors just made this stuff up?

And they did not get paid for it or obtain any fame, power, etc.

Seems odd and hard to believe.
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Sapper Redux
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Did I say everything was made up? I don't think the gospels are reliable as objective history, but that doesn't make them wholly fictional. The scholarship on them is pretty consistent that they are built off of Mark and written in Greek. Meaning they weren't written by the apostles.
dermdoc
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AG
Sapper Redux said:

Did I say everything was made up? I don't think the gospels are reliable as objective history, but that doesn't make them wholly fictional. The scholarship on them is pretty consistent that they are built off of Mark and written in Greek. Meaning they weren't written by the apostles.


Forgive me but I am confused.

If you are a non believer, how can you not believe the Gospels are fiction?
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dermdoc
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And I found this interesting.

https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/who-wrote-gospels
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Sapper Redux
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There's more in writing than just all fact or all fiction, especially in ancient writings where true fidelity to what happened was not expected in all things.
dermdoc
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Sapper Redux said:

There's more in writing than just all fact or all fiction, especially in ancient writings where true fidelity to what happened was not expected in all things.


Okay I understand your view. Thanks.
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Zobel
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AG
Love how the subtle "the apostles didn't write them" shift occurred. But if they're not written by their namesakes, who wrote them?
Aggrad08
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Literally anyone in the early Christian community with a lot of Greek literacy but removed enough from the area of the story they were capable of making basic geographical mistakes no local would and who never wrote any part of thei account in the first person and for two writers, people with access to mark which they copied nearly wholesale
Zobel
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AG
K but who?
Zobel
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Follow up. Who wrote Romans?
Aggrad08
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We don't know as late as Justin martyr they have no accreditation and our not self identified. They do not appear to be eyewitness accounts or independent accounts but you do not need to know exactly who wrote something to determine it was very unlikely for someone else to have written it.
Aggrad08
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Paul and the internal and external evidence backs this up strongly. The cases are not alike.
Zobel
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Wrong. Romans was written by Tertius.

Which is the point.

~fin~
Zobel
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Was there ever any other proposed authors for the gospels? Did they ever circulate under any other names?
Aggrad08
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The use of a scribe isn't what we are talking about. Dictation does not free you from the reasons the traditional gospel authorship is rejected by scholars
Aggrad08
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Zobel said:

Was there ever any other proposed authors for the gospels? Did they ever circulate under any other names?


This gets you out of the reasons scholars doubt traditional authorship because….

How many other proposed authors do we have for New Testament apocrypha? Has anyone else claimed credit for the Protoevangelium of James?
Zobel
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AG
You didn't answer the question. Was there ever any other proposed author? Did they ever circulate under any other name?


Quote:

The use of a scribe isn't what we are talking about. Dictation does not free you from the reasons the traditional gospel authorship is rejected by scholars
An amanuensis is not the same as dictation. They could be as simple as word for word scribes, or as full-fledged as a modern ghostwriter or speech writer.

The reason it is important that Tertius wrote Romans - and not Paul - is that even though Tertius, probably a gentile, wrote Romans but we also can acknowledge it is clearly Pauline seems to make the whole argument that because the gospels were written in Greek "meaning they weren't written by the apostles" complete bunk.

Your posts are really long, complex, strange ways to say "I don't know and I don't even have a guess of who it might be other than the traditional authors". You don't even have a theory as to who might have written them, much less any evidence.
Aggrad08
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No there was no other claimed author we know of, same with many widely considered pseudepigraphal works. Again I'm not sure what you think this buys you, It doesn't really address any fundamental reasons traditional authorship was discarded.
Sapper Redux
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Zobel said:

Was there ever any other proposed authors for the gospels? Did they ever circulate under any other names?


Yes. They didn't originally have any names attached to them.
Zobel
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AG
What evidence do you have of that?
Zobel
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Why would anyone claim to be Matthew Mark Luke or John before those works were published? What evidence do you have for false attribution? Who was Mark or Matthew or Luke or John that you can say they didn't write the works you also admit you have no idea who wrote them?
Aggrad08
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The reasons to attribute authorship in the first place are the same reasons authorship was attributed later on, it lends authority and authenticity. It's also very common place when writing a first hand account. The reason to not claim apostolic authority within the text or early on are obvious if it isn't true.

The assignment of authorship to the gospels was done for the same reason it was done for other unclaimed or falsely claimed early Christian works apocrypha or not.

We also know clearly that very early forgeries were a practice. Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:2 provides evidence that forgeries in his name already existed in his own lifetime. This is one of the Pauline works where authorship is a matter of some debate and little consensus exists, but if Paul wrote it he attest to early forgers and if he didn't the work itself is an early forgery.
 
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